Nazis
An outcast among outcasts: Katerina, by Aharon Appelfeld, reviewed
A peasant girl flees her abusive home, to find happiness working for Jewish families in the lush Carpathian countryside – until anti-Semitic pogroms change everything irrevocably
How could Hitler have had so many willing henchmen?
Richard J. Evans tackles one of the Third Reich’s great mysteries. Why did so many apparently ‘normal’ Germans end up as perpetrators of mass atrocities?
What did Britain really gain from the daring 1942 Bruneval raid?
The night-time dismantling of a German radar site in Normandy was a feat of skill, courage and imagination. But there was little improvement to Bomber Command casualties as a result
Hero and villain: The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, by Sam Taylor, reviewed
A Jewish teenager is the victim of a Nazi arson attack in 1933. Alternative scenarios see him joining the French Resistance, and being recruited by the SS
The problem with westerners seeking oriental enlightenment
Those chasing after blissful satori never seem interested in the people who actually live in Asia. They want to float in higher spheres
Dangerous secrets: Verdigris, by Michele Mari, reviewed
A lonely teenager on holiday in Italy befriends his grandparents’ elderly gardener and slowly coaxes out his painful memories of betrayals and reprisals during the war
The Duke of Windsor had much to be thankful for
Defending the ‘maligned’ Duke, Jane Marguerite Tippett fails to mention how hard officials worked to suppress evidence of his treachery and prevent a court martial in 1940
Satirical pulp: The Possessed, by Witold Gombrowicz, reviewed
The 1939 Gothic pastiche which the author was at pains to distance himself from is now considered a delightfully devious work of Polish modernism
Passports out of hell
Roger Moorhouse describes how various diplomats stationed in Europe risked their positions to issue as many forged ‘tickets to safety’ to Jews as possible
Rewriting history
If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…
Lies about the Katyn massacre added insult to the horror
Alan Philps reveals how many western journalists, duped by Stalinist propaganda, rushed to blame the Nazis for the Soviet atrocity
Chance encounters
The fates of members of a Jewish family depend on accidental meetings, the boarding of a ship or the ring of a phone in this complex fable woven from 20th-century history
Love in the shadow of the Nazi threat
Florian Illies describes the charged atmosphere of Europe in the early 1930s, as people grew increasingly desperate to celebrate their last chance of freedom
Was it murder?
In a beautifully told novel, O’Callaghan focuses on the mysterious death of the footballer Matthias Sindelar in 1939 – possibly as a result of defying Hitler
This production needs more dosh: Good, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed
Good, starring David Tennant, needs more dosh spent on it. The former Doctor Who plays John, a literary academic living…
The Osnabrück witch trials echo down the centuries
Absent mothers resonate in the latest offerings from two heavyweights of French literature. Getting Lost is the diary kept by…
The unpleasant truth about Joseph Roth
The Radetzky March must be one of the dozen greatest European novels – but its author was frighteningly unpleasant, says Philip Hensher
Nazi on the run: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, by Olivier Guez, reviewed
Who would have thought that someone would write a novel about Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor and infamous experimenter on…
The invisible man: The Glass Pearls, by Emeric Pressburger, reviewed
Not all Germans were swayed by Hitler, but the majority were. Karl Braun, the fugitive Nazi doctor at the heart…
Has the role of resistance in the second world war been exaggerated?
When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…
Eugenics will never work — thankfully
The creation of a master race is an ancient idea which, thankfully, can never work, says Sam Leith
The dark story behind Bambi, the book Hitler banned
The extent of Walt Disney’s grasp of the natural world remains unclear. After the Austrian author Felix Salten sold the…
Robert Harris on Boris Johnson, cancel culture and rehabilitating Chamberlain
Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain
Grimy, echt and gripping: Netflix's The Forgotten Battle reviewed
The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…
